How to Jump Technical Writing Industries
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If you open a random article on a tech writing career path, you will likely stumble upon the possibility of jumping industries shown as a serious advantage. And, this does sound promising – seems like you will never get bored with your job as you can snap your fingers and change things just like that. In theory, yes. But let’s see how you can go about that in real life.
Some adjacent industries can offer technical writers positions that require similar skills. Which means they can adapt almost painlessly. Or, sometimes, you don’t even have to change an industry to bring a sense of renewal to your job. Moving within an industry can be just as much fun. The easiest example is IT. Huge possibilities open up in front of a technical writer in this field. You can work in gaming, software, mobile app markets and the skills required of you will be pretty standard for IT. The situation changes when you want to enter an entirely new field.
Reasons for wanting such a change are different for everyone. Someone decides to shake things up, or, perhaps, they move cities and even states and are forced to change the industry as there are no offers pertaining to their old professional field on the local techcomm market. Or, one can randomly take an interest in an industry and decide to build a career around something they like. In either case, it is a big step that requires pondering over.
The obstacles people face are oftentimes similar. Like, you’ve created technical documentation before, and you are carrying certain work experience but it is tightly bound to your old job. So, what you need to do is throw away all the things you won’t be able to apply at your new job and carefully migrate your general tech writing skills and competencies.
If you have made up your mind and are serious about switching industries, we have some useful tips to make this potentially stressful transition smoother:
Jumping industries is a huge decision. A big fork stuck in one’s technical writing career path. We hope our words of guidance will help a little. Remember, you might feel like a complete newbie, but you are actually an experienced specialist and time will show that. Take things slow and we are sure you are going to make it through the transition period with as little tension as possible.
Good luck with your technical writing!
ClickHelp Team
Author, host and deliver documentation across platforms and devices
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